Study on Intelligent Lane Merge Control System for Freeway Work Zones

With the increasing traffic volumes on freeway systems nationwide, maintenance and construction work zones become more important to consider. These work zones are often in the form of the closure of one or more lanes, which will result in capacity bottleneck and impact the stabilization and safety of freeway. To reduce the influence of lane closure, this paper designs the control flow of Intelligent Lane Merge Control System (ILMCS) with ITS techniques, and constructs Traffic Information Collection System, Traffic Information Process and Decision System and Traffic Information Release System of ILMCS. The system identifies traffic states by analyzing real-time data collected by traffic detectors and then adopts adaptive lane merge control strategies by analyzing the extent of traffic congestion. At last, the paper evaluates ILMCS performances by simulation. The results show the performances of ILMCS exceed conventional merge controls, dynamic early merge control and dynamic late merge control, especially in improving freeway work zones safety and capacity.